This page does not review anything Dan Clark Audio makes. It counts one thing: how much of what this database says about their products came out of their own documents, and how much had to be worked out or left blank.
| Model | Impedance | Sensitivity | Source of the figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| AEON 2 Closed | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| AEON 2 Noire | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| AEON 2 Open | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| AEON RT | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| E3 | 27 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| Ether C Flow 1.1 | 23 Ω | 94.0 dB | Not published |
| Expanse | 26 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| Noire X | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| NOIRE XO | 13 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| Stealth | 23 Ω | 90.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
| ÆON Core | 17 Ω | 94.0 dB/mW | Published per mW |
Impedance is almost always printed. Sensitivity is the one that goes wrong, because a decibel figure means two very different things depending on whether it is per milliwatt or per volt — about five decibels apart at 300 Ω and eighteen at 16 Ω. The conversion is here.
| Model | As printed | Tolerance | Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| AEON 2 Closed | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| AEON 2 Noire | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| AEON 2 Open | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| AEON RT | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| E3 | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| Expanse | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| Noire X | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| NOIRE XO | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| Stealth | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
| ÆON Core | “Yes, it has one” | not printed | not printed |
Dan Clark Audio prints no frequency range at all. In all 10 models here whose sheets have been read the row is there and what stands in it is a sentence: “Yes, it has one”. That is an argument, not an omission, and a better one than most ranges printed without a tolerance.
1 further model of theirs in this database has no page left on their site at all, so there is nothing to read for it either way. That is counted separately from printing nothing, because it is a different fact.
No measurement is published here — only what was printed. The whole count, maker by maker, is in the frequency response audit.
The hardest of the 11 to drive is the Dan Clark Audio E3: 10 mW and 0.52 V for a 100 dB SPL peak. Their impedances run from 13 to 27 Ω, which matters because the voltage a headphone wants rises with impedance while the power falls.
272 of the 280 sources here reach 100 dB on all 11, and the cheapest of them is the Apple USB-C dongle (US) at $9. “Reaches” means the maker’s own published power figure is enough at that load; it is not a judgement of how it sounds.
Their lowest impedance is the Dan Clark Audio AEON 2 Closed at 13 Ω, so a source wants an output impedance at or below 1.6 Ω to satisfy the one-eighth rule on everything they make. 129 of the 169 sources that publish an output impedance manage that.
These counts use figures the source makers published themselves. A product that publishes nothing is not counted as a pass anywhere above, which is why the three numbers differ so much. The collection matcher runs the same arithmetic over whatever you actually own.
Almost everything this site says about Dan Clark Audio came from them. That is not the normal case and it is worth saying out loud.
The rule used here is the same for every maker and is described on the manufacturer index. Every figure behind it can be opened on the product page it came from, with the document it came from linked.